Chris O’Brien has a great report on the steps NPR has taken to be leaders — not just in radio, but journalism itself — and how that has translated into a culture of innovation in the organization.
Among some fascinating stats (26.4 million weekly listeners, 38 foreign bureaus, $1.5 million in digital storytelling training) O’Brien hits on what I think is the real key behind NPR’s success:
NPR officials also credit the personal nature of their work, the fact that people connect with the voices of its reporters and personalities. That’s another lesson for newspapers: People like voice, and attitude. I think that’s been flushed out of a lot of newspaper writing which has become increasingly bland.
Indeed.
I commute an hour to work every day and while the afternoon drive is dedicated to decompression, which occasionally entails rocking out, my morning drive is all NPR. I’ll even break the music cycle if I happen to be on the road when Marketplace is on and I’m not generally into business news. It’s just that good.
So NPR’s success is due in part to telling stories in an engaging way to a captive (but not compelled) audience. Blogs and other distribution methods offer even more opportunity for personalizing news content and multimedia is a no-brainer.
So how do we convince the powers that be that investing time, effort and money into really doing online news delivery is a good investment?
May be we should start with Mark Briggs’ artful summation of On the Media’s report on the Pew Center’s latest survey of the future of the Internet:
- The Internet will become completely ubiquitous. Half the survey respondents think that’s a good thing, half think it’s a bad thing.
- No matter which side of the fence you’re on, Gladstone and Rainie end up agreeing that human nature is what will be revealed. We can’t blame technology.
- Digital connectivity among people is an additive function. It does not replace offline networking. In other words, people are not more lonely or spend less time socially in the real world because of the digital connectivity.
- We’ll become ridiculously mobile.
This isn’t Earth-shattering news, but it’s instructive to get it out in black and white (so to speak). It also provides a baseline for moving forward: Internet ubiquity is coming and bitching about how things have changed is a moot point.
Why make plans for anything else?
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